The new feature-length movie adaptation of Lovecraft’s “The Colour Out of Space” appears to have been a success, both critically and in terms of being picked up for cinema distribution in the USA. Here in the UK it opens in London in early October. The movie seems to have had to get through a ‘double-hate’, with early negative reviews not only from haters of Lovecraft but also from haters of the lead actor Nic Cage. But it appears to have moved past those with ease.

On the back of a renewed interest in pastoral/rural science-fiction, Clifford D. Simak’s best novel Way Station has been picked up for a TV movie adaptation. Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, two of the new Planet of the Apes reboots) is to adapt it as a “large-scale sci-fi thriller”. It’ll be a single TV movie, apparently, rather than a mini-series. Let’s hope he doesn’t bring the Cloverfield found-footage look (camera so shaky and unsteady as to make the movie unwatchable) to Way Station. As usual with anything ‘Simak’, be very careful what you read about his work — blurb writers for Simak seem to delight in giving huge plot-spoilers.

One suspects that, inevitably, some modern political correctness will get slipped into the script. Perhaps in the 2020s the political equivalent of the Christian movie-snippers will arise, if they haven’t already done so. Those old-school snippers would deftly edit or blip out all the profanity and nudity and gore in a movie and produce a ‘clean version’.